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Traveling Through Time With WVU Baseball
May 29, 2017 02:23 PM | Baseball
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - To steal a line from Gerald Ford, West Virginia baseball’s long national nightmare is over.
It’s taken 21 years, but the Mountaineers are finally returning to the NCAA Tournament, a place they used to visit regularly in the 1960s when the legendary Steve Harrick was guiding the program.
Then, when Dale Ramsburg eventually got a budget comparable to his competitors in the 1980s and early 1990s, West Virginia once again made trips to the tournament in 1982, 1985, 1987 and 1994.
Greg Van Zant made the NCAAs once during his second season at WVU in 1996 and then WVU baseball saw its spigot get turned off until Randy Mazey’s arrival in 2013 when the Mountaineers began competing in the Big 12 Conference.
I have a unique perspective of West Virginia University baseball because that was the sport I first cut my teeth on back in 1991 as a graduate student sports information director.
I can remember my first road trip with the baseball team down to Statesboro, Georgia, for a weekend of grits, fun and sun as if it was yesterday.
Soon into the trip, I made the mistake of drinking far too many Gatorades before we reached the West Virginia Turnpike and ended up taking numerous visits to the back of the bus to relieve myself. It was after about my fifth or sixth trip to the can when I learned my first valuable travel lesson - never, ever feel secure around college baseball players.
A couple of the guys sitting in the back, most likely Billy Reep and Joe Hudson, barricaded the door and used every roll of athletic tape they could get their hands on to secure it until it was immovable.
At that point, all I could do was put down the top of the toilet seat to cover the insatiable aroma of snuff spit, urine and the prior evening’s chicken wings from Crockett’s Lodge and ride it out - a distance of three whole states traveling at a leisurely 55 miles per hour before the bus finally arrived at our destination in scenic northern Georgia.
I know we were going slow because I heard Ramsburg say to the bus driver, “Can you drive a little faster? There is a dog peeing on our wheel!”
From that moment forward, I have always had a phobia about using bathrooms on Greyhound buses.
It was also around this time when one of the great innovations of sports travel - the VCR - finally made its way to West Virginia University buses.
Ramsburg, being the players’ coach he was, allowed some of his guys to select the movie choice for one of our bus rides down south to one of those low-cost motor lodges that permitted four or five people to a room.
Rammer made few very mistakes, but letting his players pick the movie was one of them.
Someone chose “Basic Instinct,” which, amazingly somehow avoided an NC-17 rating.
Well, about 20 minutes into the flick a loud groan could be heard from the front of the bus, “Good God, what the hell is this? Did that lady just cross her legs?
“Chicken, rewind that!”
When Ramsburg saw Sharon Stone’s infamous police station interrogation scene a second time, the VCR was immediately turned off and his players were ordered to study.
“Some of your grades suck, by the way,” he yelled.
The first time I recall boarding an airplane with the WVU baseball team was for its trip to the NCAA regional down in Miami, Florida.
Nothing really sticks out in my mind about that road trip, however.
The second occasion I remember getting on an airplane with the baseball team was in 1996 when West Virginia once again qualified for NCAA play – its last appearance in the Big Dance until this year.
I do not recall all of the travel logistics, but for some reason the team flew from Pittsburgh to whatever airport is close enough to Clemson, South Carolina, and University bus driver Donald “Dieter” Brock drove down alone to meet the team and squire them about water moccasin country.
Then, when West Virginia was eventually eliminated after surprisingly winning its first two games against Tennessee and Georgia Southern, Brock dropped the team off at the airport to drive an empty bus back to Morgantown.
Feeling guilty that Donald had to make the long trek back to Morgantown alone, and realizing I could make visits to the bathroom as much as I wanted without fear of being barricaded, I joined my good buddy for the ride home. I learned everything there was to know about farming and was stunned to discover how much good livestock was going for in the mid-1990s.
Donald also suggested that I quit buying new lawnmowers to cut my grass and instead purchase a young, healthy goat. But I digress.
I heard later that pitcher Greg Stouffer, who did a spot-on impression of Beavis from the MTV animated series Beavis and Butthead, was permitted to use the plane’s intercom system (this was pre-9-11, of course) to order assistant coach Jon “Syz-nits” (Szynal, pronounced Shin-uhl) back to his seat so the plane could depart.
He may have also said “two L, two R” before the flight attendant grabbed the microphone out of his hand.
My last road trip with WVU baseball occurred a few years later when the team left me and assistant coach Eric Pavelko at the budget hotel where we were staying in Southern Jersey - a good 50 miles from Villanova’s baseball field.
When it became clear the bus was not coming back for us, we scrambled to come up with the $100 it required for the cab fare to the field - a considerable feat considering our meager salaries.
Thankfully, department business manager Eleanor Lamb accepted the ketchup-stained cab receipt I produced for reimbursement and she encouraged me to seek my own mode of travel if I wanted to continue covering the baseball team.
By that time, however, my career aspirations took me in a different direction and I believe the baton was passed on to the very talented and capable Jason Baum, who today is doing an outstanding job promoting Boston College athletics as BC’s associate athletic director for communications.
Although I have not had a direct hand in WVU baseball publicity for many, many years now, I’ve always had an affinity for the sport and revel in Randy Mazey’s current successes, particularly this year.
Indeed, it’s great to see the Mountaineers back in the NCAA Tournament.
No, I won’t be on the trip with them this year to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, but if I was you can bet your last dollar I would take it easy on those Gatorades.
That’s because you can never really feel too secure around these baseball guys. I learned that lesson the hard way many, many years ago.
Nevertheless, good luck this weekend, Mountaineers!
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